By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Eric S. Birnbaum, who served as chief inspector of the Inspection Division at headquarters, has been named special agent in charge of the Administrative Division in the Los Angeles office of the FBI. Birnbaum joined the FBI 1988 and was first posted in the Washington Field Office, where he focused on…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Scott Sweetow, head of the Atlanta ATF Division, is moving on to the Midwest to head up the St. Paul Division, which includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota and South Dakota. Sweetow, who began his career with ATF in 1990 in Los Angeles, spent several years assigned in the Arson and Explosives…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Bill L. Lewis, a former legal attache for the FBI in Baghdad, has been named assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Division. Lewis most recently served as deputy assistant director in the Human Resources Division at FBI Headquarters. He began his career in 1988 in the Omaha…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Peddling rhino horns is big business. It’s also illegal. The LA Times reports a father and son who were masterminds of an international rhinoceros horn smuggling ring pleaded guilty in a Los Angeles federal court Friday to illegal wildlife trafficking, money laundering and tax evasion. The pleas were part of a…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com David Bowdich, the special assistant to the associate deputy director at FBI headquarters, is heading out to the field to become special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Division in the Los Angeles office. Bowdich started with the FBI in 1995 and was first assigned to the San Diego Field…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com April Brooks, whose career included investigations into children-related crimes and the mysterious death of a Baltimore federal prosecutor Jonathan Luna in 2003, has been named special agent in charge of the Criminal Division in the FBI’s very busy New York Division. Brooks, special assistant to the executive assistant director of the…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A Santa Fe Springs Councilman accepted $11,500 in bribes from a marijuana dispensary owner who was working as an FBI informant, according to a plea agreement released Thursday, the L.A. Times reports. In the latest example of corruption in a Los Angeles County town, the case against Councilman Joseph Serrano Sr. alleges…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A former official for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was sentenced Friday in Los Angeles to two years in prison and ordered to pay $400,000 in restitution for obstruction of justice, giving false information to a federal prosecutor and a federal judge in Florida, and devising a scheme to…
